Was Mapplethorpe the moment we lost the battle for American culture?

I watched HBO’s documentary about Robert Mapplethorpe, and it brought back a long-forgotten memory. In 1989, my then-boyfriend and I went to an art gallery affiliated with UC Berkeley to see the controversial Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition that had so aroused Jesse Helm’s wrath. My memory is that the gallery was arranged so that one saw Mapplethorpe’s uncontroversial photos first — the flowers; the famous and not-so-famous faces; and the black and white human bodies shown, not as sexual objects, but as architectural landscapes.

Looking at the pictures, there was no doubt that Mapplethorpe was an extremely good photographer. The images were often emotionally sterile, but his sense of line was unfailing.

The crowds in the gallery, though, weren’t there to admire Mapplethorpe’s good lines and famous faces, which weren’t that much different from a lot of high-end photos that one found in many fashion and architectural magazines from the 1980s. People were there for one reason only: To see the infamous “X” photos, the ones showing explicit gay sadism and masochism, complete with exposed genitalia.

I’m sure many in the gallery were there purely out of prurient interest. The majority, though, seemed to be there for the same reasons that my then-boyfriend and I attended the show: To show how hip we were and to make it clear that we weren’t going to let some puritanical Southern “hick” like Jesse Helms censor “art” in America. (Obviously, this was during my Democrat youth.)

I vaguely remember that, when I saw the photographs, I was partly fascinated and completely disgusted. The fascination was connected to a single thought: “Do people really get pleasure out of those grotesque, and probably painful, activities?”

My then-boyfriend had a much more visceral reaction. He put his hand across his mouth, bolted for the exit, and threw up in the bushes.

Here’s my question for you: Can you imagine anyone today having a reaction similar to his? In the years since the fight over the Mapplethorpe exhibition, our world has become saturated with pornography and penises, all of which were off limits in polite company before the Mapplethorpe show. For anything short of snuff films, there’s nothing left to surprise us anymore.

Heck, highly-rated shows such as Bones — which are popular with the teen set — boasted entire episode about horse fetishes and The Simpsons, shown at 8:00 p.m. Saturday nights, saw Homer enjoying a lesbian fantasy about his wife. Our gag reflexes have been deadened by non-stop exposure to things that no one spoke about outside of New York’s, San Francisco’s, and Los Angeles’ club scenes.

The fight now isn’t about pictures of tortured penises in hoity-toity art galleries; it’s about whether we’re discriminating against a minute percentage of the American population, those who have a gender-focused form of body dysmorphia, when those of us still athwart the barricades yelling “stop” say that it’s wrong for men with functioning penises to be allowed free run in bathrooms that serve little girls, teenage girls, and women (something for every sick rapist’s or exhibitionist’s favorite fantasy).

In a sane culture, one that hadn’t had dysfunctional, perverse behavior normalized over the past thirty years, the vast majority of Americans would never countenance what’s being forced on us now. We’d say that we have sympathy for those poor people with body dysmorphia. Because of that sympathy, we’d be willing to try certain workarounds, such as making a single use staff bathroom available for the high school boy who has been dressing in girl’s clothes since fifth grade. What we won’t do, however, is turn every public bathroom in America into a pedophiles’ playground. It’s never been part of the American polity that avoiding discrimination against the minority requires possibly dangerous discrimination against the majority.

What the Left refuses to recognize is that, when it comes to men, clothes don’t always make the woman. That is, just because a guy dons a dress, that doesn’t mean he thinks he’s a woman. I happen to know a guy who’s slept with thousands of women. He wouldn’t dream of sleeping with a man, but he loves dressing in women’s clothes. His practice is harmless enough, and he’s not a threat to anyone, but that doesn’t mean that the next guy who shows up in a dress is equally harmless.

Or take the case of the man who, when his grown daughter came calling, answered the door wearing his deceased wife’s clothing. When the daughter expressed surprise, he told her that he’d been cross-dressing for years, because he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. With his wife’s passing, he was out of the closet and getting himself ready for gender reassignment surgery. The daughter, who had a distant relationship with her father, didn’t see him again for a year or two. This time, when she knocked, he answered the door in male clothing.

“What happened to the gender reassignment surgery?”

“It turned out that I’m not a woman trapped in a man’s body; I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. And I get much more action with women if they think I’m a man.”

After you’ve finished untangling that, please remember that, under the new rules the Left is insisting America accept, this “lesbian man” could be in the bathroom stall next to your daughter at the airport, the baseball game, the local Walmarts, or any number of other busy, crowded, impersonal public restrooms.

Compassion and kindness do not require stamping “normal” on behavior that quite obviously isn’t normal.

While I’m on the subject, let me talk a bit about gender-based body dysmorphia the Left has managed to “normalize” within just a few short months. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it refers to a person who feels that, at a fundamental level, his/her body is wrong. This is not the same as a woman who wishes she weighed less or a man who hates his skinny calves. Few of us are completely satisfied with our bodies, but we change our diets, or exercise, or look for makeup and clothes that downplay things we don’t like, and then we get on with our lives (or we do nothing about what bothers us and still get on with our lives).

People with body dysmorphia don’t just dislike something about their body. Instead, they are convinced that the wrong body (or body part) somehow got attached to them. Their sense of wrongness is so great that they feel compelled to remove or reconfigure whatever it is they believe is alien to their identity.

If you read tabloids such as The Daily Mail, every so often it runs stories about people with severe body dysmorphia. The stories are always distressing.

There’s Jocelyn Wildenstein, who has been trying for years to look like a cat:

Or Peter Burns, who embarked on a radical gender change long before Bruce Jenner even began plucking his eyebrows:

And the most recent entrant into the lists, Richard Hernandez, the formerly human man who is busily converting himself into a female dragon, complete with missing ears and minimal nostrils:

All of us looking at these photos instinctively know something is wrong with Wildenstein, Burns, and Hernandez. To have ones sense of self so seriously disconnected from ones physical being is a tragedy — and for that reason, I think we ought to pity these people. They deserve compassion, not contempt. But we do recognize, as I said, that something is wrong with them.

Since the Mapplethorpe revolution, however, we’re no longer able to acknowledge that something is wrong with this person too:

Despite the fact that Jenner has the same body dysmorphia as Jocelyn, Pete, and Richard, we’re told “This is a hero! Celebrate!” Well, I don’t view Jenner as a hero. I continue to respect Jenner’s past accomplishments, I appreciate that his political values are conservative, I dislike his exhibitionism, and I feel compassion for how obviously he suffers as he tries to find a happy meeting spot for his body and his mind. What I don’t do is think he’s a hero, and I don’t think what he’s going through is normal. The problem, though, is that once you’ve normalized Mapplethorpe’s S&M and penis worship, you’ve made it awfully difficult to back away from conversations about whether Bruce has or has not augmented his false breasts with an amputated penis and artificial vagina.

If I had to go back and distil the essence of this post, I’d say that those of us who think we’re at the front line of the gender wars are not. We’re fighting a rearguard action in a battle that we already lost back in the late 1980s.

Of course, losing the battle doesn’t mean giving up. We can still fight. Just as the Left pushed the culture in this crazy direction, it is possible to push it back the other way. The pendulum swings, and then swings again. I do like to remind myself that the rigidly moral Victorian era was preceded by the unusually corrupt Georgian period. Just don’t expect any victories in the near future, that’s all….

I think the Supreme Court began to lose it with the decisions on Flag Burning is free speech and Porn is free speech. Those decisions disconnected the Law from Morals and Virtues, and the whirlwind was loosed. What the court said may be technically free speech, but it allows ill-mannered, disgusting, rude, crude, low-life political behavior. And Society, in general, has no recourse to correct such behavior as it is now constitutionally protected. The court continued with gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, and obamacare; finding constitutional rights where none existed, further eroding morals and corroding behavior. The supreme court destroyed the founding principle that it takes a moral, virtuous and self-disciplined people to exercise self-government.

11B40

Greetings:

Back in my Economics studying daze, I came across something called “Say’s Law”. It referred to situations where societies shift from metal money to paper money. The related quip went “Bad money drives out good” meaning that people would tend to hoard the metal money due to its higher perceived value while using the paper money. Unfortunately,
there’s an argument to be made that it similarly applies to cultures in general.

Alternatively, and as the good Sisters of Mercy taught us back in Saint Margaret Mary’s Grammar School, when it comes to the temptation to sin, the Devil almost always has ease or pleasure on his side.

Danny Lemieux

And people wonder why conservative Muslims are absolutely revolted by Western Culture and vow to destroy it? We have become so “open minded” as a society that we can’t even recognize mental illness for what it is but celebrate it as a higher form of existence.

Liberius

While they’re right to be revolted, their solutions are even worse than the problem. That’s not praise of the problem, but a statement about their solutions. There has to be a way to overcome this corruption that doesn’t involve slavery to a medieval system of law and governance, and we need to find it fast because the clock is ticking.

ejochs

Sure, but they do see the direction this society is going and say no way, we’ll keep our primitive throwback ways if liberalization ends up with this.

Jim O’Neil

“…can’t even recognize mental illness for what it is but celebrate it as a higher form of existence.”

I fully agree with that part of your post however I feel your are giving slave owing, woman suppressing, honor killing, bloody handed barbarians far too much moral credit. They’ve been revolted by western culture and trying to destroy it for 1400 years.

Danny Lemieux

I agree with you, Jim….however, note…I did not give them any “moral” credit. Their moral system is just very different than ours, something that Western elites who believe that all people are alike or that traditional Muslims will be simply enthralled with the “freedoms” provided by Western culture when they get here…just don’t get.

For me, it started as a way to track holidays important to my friends and relatives but weren’t all that important to me. I might have a friend whose birthday I might recognize by sending a card or something, but I don’t necessarily need to know his child’s Christening date. The kid’s birthday, well, maybe depending on how well I knew the child and the parents.

It grew into a way to track lifestyle choices. After all, I’m only going to be interested in someone’s sexuality if I going to sleep with them, right? Otherwise it’s none of my business. ABDNC.

I don’t think it started with Mapplethorpe. There was quite a cross-dressing fad in the 1920s and 1930s. Not to mention all those nudes in classic art.

Do I think that Mapplethorpe should have been banned? No, but I don’t think he should have been on the public dime either. For that matter, I don’t think any art should be on the public dime.

One thing I think people forget is we’re supposed to be a nation of freedom. Freedom isn’t funded or controlled by government. It’s chosen and defended by individuals who accept the consequences of their own words and actions.

Free to choose. But I choose my celebrations.

Libby_CO

Sadly, we’ve moved past the ABDNC stage.

Don’t like Mapplethorpe, so you don’t seek out his exhibit or books. Fine, except some public school art teacher may well be exposing your kids to him in her curriculum.

Don’t support same-sex marriage? Fine, except not only are your kids being indoctrinated to support it in school and by the media/entertainment industries, but they’re forcing wedding businesses to participate in services, they’re having our military participate in Pride celebrations, they’re sneaking a mass same-sex wedding into a Grammy award performance (doubt they asked attendees if they were comfortable with this).

Don’t embrace transgenderism as a valid lifestyle choice? Fine, but you and your family will be forced to share bathrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms with people of the opposite sex. You will be encouraged by the media/entertainment industries to cheer Caitlyn Jenner – and watch as they express 2 minutes of hate toward anyone who uses the “wrong” pronoun or, like Bret Favre at the ESPYs, do not clap for Jenner & others with enough enthusiasm.

There are activist organizations, power-hungry progressive DAs and Obama’s DOJ seeking out dissenters to punish should you not affirmatively support these newly normalized deviant lifestyle. Remember Holder’s DOJ management policy instructed managers to openly affirm LGBT employees’ lifestyle, because silence is equated with disapproval, and disapproval is *not* allowed anymore.

Perhaps I misunderstand, but it seems that your solution would be a purge of the things you don’t approve of.

Isn’t that perilously close to what the progressives want to do?

Maybe government should not be given that kind of power?

Without government money and sanction, wouldn’t the rest of the problems you list dry up?

Libby_CO

I don’t have a solution, I’m not suggesting one.

Just recognizing that, as Book mentioned, we’re fighting a rearguard action in a battle that we already lost at this point, and it is a battle they will no longer allow us “live and let live” types to sit out.

We don’t have to “purge” or “censor”, but we can share with society just why these cultural depravities are worthy of contempt. We can certainly insist that public (i.e., “our”) monies not be used to subsidize such “art” (or any form of art, for that matter). If we ever expect to “reinstill” virtue in our society, it can only be done voluntarily, but we should feel free and compelled to help sway the discussion.

I’m less interested in which is the “right” art as I am people making their own choices. I don’t think it’s government’s job to decide what is and is not art, and I don’t think it’s government’s job to pay for it.

Lee Also

One of the major problems is that we’ve substituted chuch with nothing much. What’s “right” is relative. Moral relativism everywhere. What is a “sin” in the world of moral relativism? It’s what our Fearless Leader said it was: something that goes against “my” values.

Seriously though, I think we have things in common that are beyond a specific creed.

Christians call it the Golden Rule, scholars call it the Ethic of Reciprocity. I just call it one of the most important ideas in Western Civilization. We’re taught that it’s bad to hurt other people or take their stuff because we don’t want them to do it to us.

That’s what we share.

Which art is good, which church is THE Church, and what we should wear after Labor Day, not so much.

We should build on our commonality. We shouldn’t worry about the rest.

❝Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same.❞

It starts in education. The entire American educational establishment must be destroyed.

MacG

Part of this is that we have an abundance of space for information and been there, read that. I pretty much am a see a movie, read a book, once kinda guy. Then move on. I used be freaked out at scary movies but desensitized my self by going to a few. So been there seen that, what’s next? Some people are squeamish and some are curious which is how some become medical examiners and some steer clear of the ‘gory’. My sister likes the macabre. She got a job as a medical transcriber for Napa State Hospital and loved it. She did however transcribe a case that she could not even talk about. I think the ‘educated’ haves view themselves as open minded and curious and being open to talking about such things gives them some academic Hall Cred (Street Cred). Like the Pro Abortion woman that would never have one herself, they view themselves as social Robin Hoods robbing from the masses their safe normals by exposing them to the extremes to prove how tolerant they are while exposing the mentally and academically weak are those who find disgust in the other 1%. What this does though is take another bite of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and nurture such urges in those who have not the strength to resist but to succumb.

“8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is [e]lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. 9 The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.” Phillipians 4

Realize I’m paraphrasing here, but isn’t there a saying about people with too “open minds” – that it’s just another way of saying that there’s a hole in the head out of which leaks brain matter!?!?!

SCOTTtheBADGER

Theodore Roosevelt once said, ” You must keep an open mind, but it shouldn’t be so free that geese roam freely through it”.

Jeanne Capurro

. . . and you know what geese leave behind!!!

Lee Also

It’s like a break in a dam: first, it’s a small drip, and then, WHOOSH! A flood. Mapplethorpe was one HUGE drip before the flood… But it sure opened the fissure a hell of a lot.

The Vagina Monologues:
Bad drama, bad playwrighting, but so much excitement, that it’s still causing problems. I went with a group of people from my office, all women office, except for the top dog’s boyfriend. He walked out. To this day, I am thankful for him. It made it so much easier for me to leave. Anyhow, it’s crappy stuff that’s getting too much stage time.

Saatchi’s Sensation
Charles Saatchi got snookered and foster that crap on the rest of us. I saw the “Sensation” exhibit in 1999. You know, the painting with the Madonna in elephant dung? Except, it wasn’t the elephant dung that was the most offensive part: it was the cut outs from pornography magazines of women’s crotches — those little things that look like butterflies… Most of the rest of the stuff was just awful, terrible, nasty. (Though some people had good technique; Ofili was not one of them.)

Culture has been drifting down the toilet. It was drips and drops and slow leaks. But I think you might be right: Mapplethorpe was the breaking of the dam.

FaCubeItches

“Of course, losing the battle doesn’t mean giving up. We can still fight.”

Fighting after losing the battle? No, our situation is more like pondering firing a shot after after our military has been annihilated, our nation razed, and our people either exterminated or sold into slavery. The Right got routed in the culture war – and lost so badly that it’s just now starting to notice.

jdubya_az

My opinion of the Fall of Western Society started the day Anita Bryant was slammed in the face with a cream pie by a radical leftist. That was the beginning of the end. No one challenged, charged, or fought back the push from the radical gay agenda.
And no, I am not anti-gay. The radical gay movement wants all the traditional principles of the West (marriage, etc); however, will promote zero reciprosity back to the society that gives into the concept (sue over flowers, cakes, etc).
It is a brutish culture that will be short lived and burn out.
The phoenix from those ashes will be even worse: radical anti-Judeo-Christian leftists…
Just my opinion…

blue_persuasion

We have finally come to a point in time where we not only accept, we CELEBRATE mental illness. We give it catchy names, we berate people who want nothing to do with this insanity, and we give men in skirts the right to use our little girls’ bathrooms. I will stand staunchly against this moronic display of raging mental illness and say, “Thank you, no.”